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Bladesinger - a criticism of its design
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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7259512" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>Let's unpack this a bit, then:</p><p></p><p>You claim that wizards overshadow fighters because they can trivialize obstacles and encounters that the fighter cannot. This was stipulated for the sake of argument at the beginning, and I'll continue to stipulate it.</p><p></p><p>You then claim that bladesingers in particular are egregious at this overshadowing because the can still trivialize obstacles and encounters but can ALSO take the role of the tank from the fighter. Further, you narrowed the definition of fighter to Champion X and board with defensive style -- a choice I feel is lacking in comparative power due to the general poor performance of Champion in anything other than an offensive role, but that's not the point here.</p><p></p><p>So, given these two claims of how bladesingers overshadow fighters, we ran some numbers. Those number show that the example bladesinger can expect to use all of their slots performing as the tank at least 1 in 4 days (expected 25% of at least 10 strikes @ AC 22 with blur and warding bond up) as well as significant portion of a cleric's slots. This leaves no room for overshadowing of the first kind.</p><p></p><p>The examples clearly show that the bladesinger can do the fighter's job of being a tank (given: even better than a Champ X and board) but only if they dedicate all of their resources to accomplishing this task. This means the bladesinger isn't performing the usual wizardy overshadowing -- which would be using resources to do everything not directly related to enabling their tanking shtick. If we generally assume wizards are NOT tanking, then what they do to overshadow fighters would be the normal wizardy things. That's the point, and it's not a tautology -- there's a distinct and reasoned binning of ability here. </p><p></p><p>But, by your metric, ANY wizard is superior to a Champion X and board at tanking -- all wizards can wear platemail, use a shield, have warding bond cast upon them, and cast blur, for AC 21 with disadvantage, which is much better defensively than what any champion can produce. Sure, they're suffer disadvantage on any number of ability checks, but they can do the job better (according to your definitions here) because spells and a cleric aide-de-camp. </p><p></p><p>But, doing this requires ALL of the resources of a 6th level bladesinger. On good days you'll have a few slots left for normal wizardy things, but you cannot count on this because not having a shield or blur ready in a combat is likely fatal to the bladesinger. Further, the <em>requirement </em>that you maintain a concentration slot on defense means less flexibility for other things without high risk. This fact puts a significant limiter on when and how the bladesinger contributes other than running the blur/mage armor/shield combo, and is supported by the actual play accounts of running a bladesinger - strong early but then needing to step to the back line to perform as a wizard and not as a tank. This clearly supports my contention - so far completely ignored by you - that the bladesinger is very limited by action economy choices and the fact they can't run as a tank AND a wizard at the same time. </p><p></p><p>Your continued insistent on looking at isolated encounter setups and then extrapolating the 1 in 2 case as everyday expected is greatly skewing your understanding of how this tradition actually plays. It cannot both perform the tank role AND the wizard role. This limitation greatly reduces the overshadowing from the normal wizard, who can use her resources to trivialize encounters and obstacles in ways the fighter cannot, to being able to use all of those resources normally spent trivializing challenges to performing the tank role. I don't think this is egregious because 1) the resource cost is high, 2) it's risky (an ambush is very bad for the bladesinger and not uncommon in games), and 3) it only outperforms the most marginal of fighter builds.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 7259512, member: 16814"] Let's unpack this a bit, then: You claim that wizards overshadow fighters because they can trivialize obstacles and encounters that the fighter cannot. This was stipulated for the sake of argument at the beginning, and I'll continue to stipulate it. You then claim that bladesingers in particular are egregious at this overshadowing because the can still trivialize obstacles and encounters but can ALSO take the role of the tank from the fighter. Further, you narrowed the definition of fighter to Champion X and board with defensive style -- a choice I feel is lacking in comparative power due to the general poor performance of Champion in anything other than an offensive role, but that's not the point here. So, given these two claims of how bladesingers overshadow fighters, we ran some numbers. Those number show that the example bladesinger can expect to use all of their slots performing as the tank at least 1 in 4 days (expected 25% of at least 10 strikes @ AC 22 with blur and warding bond up) as well as significant portion of a cleric's slots. This leaves no room for overshadowing of the first kind. The examples clearly show that the bladesinger can do the fighter's job of being a tank (given: even better than a Champ X and board) but only if they dedicate all of their resources to accomplishing this task. This means the bladesinger isn't performing the usual wizardy overshadowing -- which would be using resources to do everything not directly related to enabling their tanking shtick. If we generally assume wizards are NOT tanking, then what they do to overshadow fighters would be the normal wizardy things. That's the point, and it's not a tautology -- there's a distinct and reasoned binning of ability here. But, by your metric, ANY wizard is superior to a Champion X and board at tanking -- all wizards can wear platemail, use a shield, have warding bond cast upon them, and cast blur, for AC 21 with disadvantage, which is much better defensively than what any champion can produce. Sure, they're suffer disadvantage on any number of ability checks, but they can do the job better (according to your definitions here) because spells and a cleric aide-de-camp. But, doing this requires ALL of the resources of a 6th level bladesinger. On good days you'll have a few slots left for normal wizardy things, but you cannot count on this because not having a shield or blur ready in a combat is likely fatal to the bladesinger. Further, the [I]requirement [/I]that you maintain a concentration slot on defense means less flexibility for other things without high risk. This fact puts a significant limiter on when and how the bladesinger contributes other than running the blur/mage armor/shield combo, and is supported by the actual play accounts of running a bladesinger - strong early but then needing to step to the back line to perform as a wizard and not as a tank. This clearly supports my contention - so far completely ignored by you - that the bladesinger is very limited by action economy choices and the fact they can't run as a tank AND a wizard at the same time. Your continued insistent on looking at isolated encounter setups and then extrapolating the 1 in 2 case as everyday expected is greatly skewing your understanding of how this tradition actually plays. It cannot both perform the tank role AND the wizard role. This limitation greatly reduces the overshadowing from the normal wizard, who can use her resources to trivialize encounters and obstacles in ways the fighter cannot, to being able to use all of those resources normally spent trivializing challenges to performing the tank role. I don't think this is egregious because 1) the resource cost is high, 2) it's risky (an ambush is very bad for the bladesinger and not uncommon in games), and 3) it only outperforms the most marginal of fighter builds. [/QUOTE]
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